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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23972086">Research, Destruction, and Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/highlyintelligentblonde/pseuds/highlyintelligentblonde'>highlyintelligentblonde</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Coworkers - Freeform, EWE, Epilogue What Epilogue, F/M, M/M, enemies to friends to coworkers to lovers, written from Theo's perspective bc why not</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 06:22:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23972086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/highlyintelligentblonde/pseuds/highlyintelligentblonde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>How Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger finally got together after knowing each other for 10 years, being friends for five, and being coworkers for 3. Told from an insider perspective ;)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>DFW Birthday GOGO Fest 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Research, Destruction, and Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/grace_lou_freebush/gifts">grace_lou_freebush</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>: I own nothing, I swear. This is an AU in which Voldemort was defeated the first time around, no Horcruxes made, etc. My prompts were: coworkers, EWE?<br/>For the lovely grace_lou_freebush !</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was no such thing as a normal day in the Department of Mysteries – anyone who was close to anyone who worked there could tell you that – but the day Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger <em>finally</em> stopped dancing around each other was an especially strange day. I would know: I saw it firsthand. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement and Department of Mysteries had been working on a huge project for the last year and it was finally coming to a head. I had been interested in this project from the start: in the nearly 20 years since Voldemort had attempted to take over the Wizarding World, most of his followers had been rounded up and sent to Azkaban, but a few remained – namely my father, Thoros Nott, Walden Macnair, and Roland Jugson. (The thre of them were mostly sane, especially for followers of the so called ‘Dark Lord’) Personally I never bought into any of that bullshite, and neither did Draco no matter what some may believe or say. My mother distrusted my father enough to ensure her offspring would be sent to live with Narcissa Malfoy in the event of her untimely death, and to honor her memory, as soon as my father was arrested, I gave the Ministry full rights to Nott Manor – it had never been home to me and, despite my clean record, I wanted to keep proving to everyone that I was nothing like my father.</p>
<p>           The Aurors dispatched to Nott Manor – including my devastatingly handsome boyfriend Harry Potter and my best friend Draco Malfoy – found a variety of cursed Dark Artifacts ranging from Hands of Glory and other objects easily found in Borgin and Burkes to cursed jewelry and what appeared to be failed (we hoped) attempts at Horcruxes that could be used to somehow resurrect Voldemort. Those last objects were the main focus of this project, as very little research existed on Horcruxes and the only ways known to destroy them were rather hard to control, thus leaving the Ministry to create a joint task force for what Hermione liked to call ‘modified R&amp;D’ – Research and Destruction of the potential Horcruxes. After Nott Manor was cleared out, the current projects Granger and I were working on were set aside in favor of working with Draco and Harry to figure out what the hell we were dealing with, learn as much as we could about it, and destroy it. Draco, Harry, and I all had access to extensive family libraries with plenty of books related to the Dark Arts, which Draco and I had the most firsthand experience with thanks to our fathers, and Granger was (obviously) the best researcher in the Ministry, if not the entire country.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the project there hadn’t been much tension: we all attending Hogwarts together for seven years, but Draco and I had been in Slytherin while Harry and Granger were in Gryffindor (the latter being a hatstall, and everyone still thought she should have been a Ravenclaw. She’s brave as hell for sure, but anyone who’s met Hermione Granger automatically assumes she was a Ravenclaw), thus leading to automatic tension and distrust. If you add in our Death Eater fathers, there was definitely no love lost between our houses and the four of us. By our sixth year however, due to our identical class schedules, Granger and I had formed an unspoken truce and formed a study group, which Draco and Harry joined (the former because he shared our schedule and the latter at first to make sure Granger was ok and stuck around because of my charming personality and possibly because he actually wanted to do well in his classes) When Granger and I first heard about the project, we hoped that we’d be able to work with them, as we knew we worked well together, but were still slightly surprised that they’d approved our group without any comment.</p>
<p>Even after working for the Ministry for four years, Granger was somewhat surprised by how little the Ministry cared about relationships between its workers. Harry and I had been together since our 7<sup>th</sup> year and the Ministry didn’t care as long as we got our work done. We had also been trying to get Draco and Granger together since then because despite their protests, we knew they’d be great for each other. They both were brilliant, had a great work ethic, and had been ignoring their feelings for each other for too long. Granger was especially hung up on the Ministry’s lack of any policy and was constantly worried that she would be penalized or fired for dating Draco. Part of her worries may have been due to her well-known status as a Muggleborn and the Ministry’s tendency to punish Muggleborns for things Purebloods and most half bloods could get away with, and because she, Gryffindor’s Golden Girl, would be taking the Slytherin Prince off the dating market, which would attract the ire of most women in Britain if not Europe.</p>
<p>Because of that, and because Draco was <em>terrified</em> of being rejected by the woman he’d been in love with for the better part of five years, Harry and I decided that the project provided us a great way to finally get them together. The four of us tended to get together most weekends and occasionally for dinners during the week, but now we’d be seeing each other every day at work and it would be too easy to convince Granger and Draco to take work to one of our houses and continue working or researching. Forcing them to spend so much time together was very entertaining for Harry and I, as they would accidentally flirt with each other, be embarrassed and confused, and deny that anything had happened before immediately returning to work. After many weeks of this, Harry and I started intentionally showing up a few minutes late to our meetings to see if anything would happen when the two of them were alone together, and that ended up being successful.</p>
<p>The first time it happened, they seemed to be having a great conversation and we were almost sorry to interrupt them, and by the day of our last meeting they were either about to kiss or had just kissed and were trying to process what had just happened, so I imagine our sudden arrival only added to the awkwardness. When I asked Harry if Hermione had told him anything about what had happened, he told me that Draco had asked her if she’d want to accompany him to the celebration the Ministry was putting on to celebrate the success of this project and she had agreed, shyly confessing her feelings for him before telling him that it was ok if he felt differently, they could go as friends. It turned out that we had walked in right after Draco had kissed her as a last attempt to get her to shut up and stop freaking out about it. When we saw them at the party, they were definitely the hottest couple there, even if they ignored my reminders that they would have been dancing around their feelings instead of with each other if it hadn’t been for me.</p>
<p>No matter what Draco and Granger – no Granger, I’ll never stop calling you that no matter how much you protest: when you marry Draco maybe that will change, but that depends if you keep your last name or not – say, they’re grateful to me for getting them together, and I know Harry is too. (He actually admits it makes our double dates actual double dates now and they’re much less awkward, but I think he’s mostly happy to see his best friend happy and in love)</p>
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